----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2012 4:41
PM
Subject: Re: [ocba] Worker seem to be
ignoring the queencage
Hi Frank,
its been a weird year so far. This same thing happened to a friend... and
neebee.. Sally. She may join in and post not sure. Her 2 packages went in ok,
but by the second day the one had left the hive and went into the other. she
noticed the bearding and was trying to figure this out. they went in and saw
the very same thing.5 or so bees on the queen. they then moved 3-4 frames
of bees back over to only find they were all back over by the next day.
when i looked in i (on day 3) i figured out that they were not
taking to the queen, she looked sick and had a whitish dust-flaking on her
back. i do not know what that was, but she was dead the very next day.
Since then her now double package, single queen has been VERY productive
in making fresh wax (all new frames) and storing some pollen and LOTS of
nectar-syrup. BUT when I went in today ( just 2 weeks out) she had only layed
some brood on portions of 4-5 frames and the girls already had starting
making supercedure cells. most capped and some not. So they don't seem to like
here either...she also had spotty brood, when she laid, and i even found a few
eggs in the nectar and pollen cells beside the small amount of brood.
WEIRD! So we are gonna let them emerge and make a new queen that will
hopefully do much better...Sally or I will keep you posted on how that goes
next month.
So my personal experience from this weekend from my packages was that 10
of the 20 queens i got were smaller than normal. Had to look hard to tell
which one was the queen at first. So i do not have an answer for the separate
packaging...anyone know why it was different this year?? It seems to me that
extra day or two would start the bonding experience. This is not the norm, but
my biggest issue was that 6 of my packages had 1/3 dead bees in there before i
opened it......could have been the 2 very tiny holes in the bottom of the can!
I'm SO glad i sprayed them a few times before opening them up...i think most
starved!
Marty
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Frank Gillespie
<frank AT porterscales.com>
wrote:
Hi all,
One of the folks up in Wake Forest that I’m friends with
on Facebook is having a problem with one of his two new colonies: the bees
seem to be ignoring the queen! The first hive is acting normally in that
they are clustered around the queen cage but the second group are split into
three separate clusters with none of them around the queen. There might be
one or two workers on the queen’s cage but that is it. He checked the hive
two days after the installation and made sure his queen was still alive and
she is. Both he and I are out of ideas…
The queens this year didn’t come inside the package but
rather were separated from all packages for their trip up from Georgia. I’m
wondering if maybe the girls just don’t sense the queen pheromones yet.
Any ideas?
Regards,
Frank
Gillespie
Laboratory
Service
Porter
Scales
Tel: 919-828-1750
Fax: 919-755-0991
Cell: 919-538-6817
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--
Marty Hanks
Just Bee, Apiaries
Home of the Orange County Honey Project.
"Created by Artisans....Bottled by Humans"
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